A skateboard game worth playing

User Rating: 8 | Thrasher SK8 PS
Thrasher: Skate and Destroy is the first skateboard game to try and fail to overthrow the more commercially favored Tony Hawk's Pro Skater franchise. However, Thrasher is more superior in terms of realism than Tony Hawk. Here's an excellent example: You can try it until the cows come home, but you can't Ollie up twenty stairs in Thrasher! Thrasher takes a more real-life approach to the skateboard video game genre. The key ingredient in Thrasher's downfall was most likely the controls because, unlike Tony Hawk's pick up and play control scheme, Thrasher's control scheme is way more difficult. For example, in Thrasher, you push the square button to land a trick, while in Tony Hawk, you don't press anything. Although this may be irritating for some players, it feels more like you're actually controlling the skater when they land a trick. Another cool feature is when your skater crashes, it's hysterical because you can control him/her when you are crashing. The graphics of the levels could be better, especially the Hills section of the San Francisco level, where it's all downhill, literally. Also, another feature to the game is that if you stay in a particular level for too long, you get caught by the cops for skating (except for when the level description says "There is no cop" and that only happens when it's a competition level). One final thing: If you play this game on expert mode, you have to beat the game twice, once by "ripping" the levels and the second time by "destroying" the levels by getting the top score on the high score list and getting your mugshot on the cover of Thrasher Magazine five times. It's pretty difficult to do. So, if you are a skateboarding fan that had this game for the original PlayStation, I suggest you go down to your parents' basement and find this old gem and play it.